Hawk's Eye
by Unoriginality
Summary: Envy finds himself a new toy.


Envy had this game where he systematically would seek out, find and then istalk/i- like a predator stalking its prey- anyone that kept Edward Elric walking on the safe side of the blurred line of sanity.

Alphonse would be the hardest to break the influence of; in fact, Envy was begrudgingly willing to admit that he may actually be impossible and he'd have to eliminate that problem the old fashioned way.

But Mustang and his little group of lackeys was another matter.

The blonde-haired lieutenant was proving an interesting challenge; the others were easy to sidetrack, or at least relatively so, and he was saving Mustang for last, savoring the deliciousness of the wild card he'd soon hold against the man _(what will you do, Flame Alchemist, when your dead best friend suddenly appears on your doorstep?)_, but Hawkeye was difficult. The woman was too composed, too level-headed, and too damn tight-lipped. The only weakness she seemed to have was Mustang himself.

Which opened possibilities, to be certain, but somehow he suspected that trying to trick her into believing he was Mustang would be as effective as trying to trick Edward into believing he was Alphonse. It might work for all of a moment before Hawkeye pumped him full of lead slugs. Hardly a deterrent, but an ineffectual annoyance at the very least.

So he followed her, for a number of days, quite happily ignoring Dante's ever-growing insistent ravings at him to 'get his ass back to work, you worthless lazy little beast' that Sloth seemed to pass along with far too much amusement. He followed her from high overhead, taking the form of the red-tailed hawk that used to make its territory near her home on the edges of East HQ grounds.

She knew the hawk was there, and never suspected that the true creature had 'mysteriously' died, left as little more than a mass of bloodied feathers in a ditch on the outer edges of its territory. She'd been quite fond of it, from what he'd seen, breaking that cold and professional expression to smile in its

_his_

direction if he was in her line of sight as she unlocked her door and stepped into her house for the evening.

She always smiled and waved in his direction whenever she was out in the evenings, taking that mongrel of hers for a walk. Hayate inevitably yapped and barked at him as if that were anything _that_ would frighten the bird away, and Hawkeye shushed the animal with a stern tone and a shake of her head.

Envy eyed the dog, turning his head to fix it with the intense gaze of a hawk's golden eye, then shrieked in response and took to the air, letting the thermals, rapidly weakening in the cooling evening air, lift him to acceptable striking altitude. With another shriek, he swooped down.

It took the lieutenant a moment to realize where the dive was aimed and she scrambled to grab her pet and get out of the way, but raptors were known for the lethal speed of their dives, and his talons found their mark, sinking briefly into the dog's flesh below its shoulder blade before he released it and pulled up out of his dive.

Hayate howled, ear-splitting and headache inducing and Envy briefly regretted not grabbing the animal's muzzle, and the lieutenant actually shrieked in surprise, dropping to her knees and grabbing the animal.

"You shouldn't trust anything with golden eyes like a hawk's eye, Lieutenant," he called back as he pulled up and away. The woman snapped her head up to look for the source of the voice, not looking in the hawk's direction anymore as she got to her feet, cradling the injured (and protesting comically violently- stupid animal, didn't it know that it was safer for it to hold still?) dog in her arms.

After a wary second of searching, the lieutenant turned and took off, and Envy wondered who she figured could help her injured animal.

He paused long enough to leave the real hawk's body- or what was left of it, really- on her doorstep before he retreated from sight.

* * *

><p>Her eyes were tired and blood-shot the next day in the office. He watched her through the window, perched in a tree that hung outside of Mustang's office, almost regretting that bluebird's couldn't smile as he watched her enter the colonel's office that afternoon. <em>(Coming in late, hm? How sweet. Your commanding officer's so generous to allow you time off to sit up with your poor poor puppy at the doctor's office.)<em>

He perked when the door to the office opened behind her and Edward stepped in. The young alchemist shot the lieutenant a curious look, fixing those intense golden eyes on her...

And Envy wanted to laugh triumphantly at the almost imperceptible flinch on her face at it.

_"You shouldn't trust anything with golden eyes like a hawk's eye, Lieutenant."_


End file.
